PA Lamb Farm

PA Lamb Farm "Growing quality lambs, diligent hands, and grateful hearts."

Here is a visual of our flock's harvest-efficiency on ground that we manage for a landowner. Zoom in to see the grass v...
06/03/2026

Here is a visual of our flock's harvest-efficiency on ground that we manage for a landowner.

Zoom in to see the grass volume where the flock has just been moved, versus prior days' paddocks in the foreground.

As compared to stocking for longer periods of time, daily moves have the following benefits for the land:

1) Fertilizer/excrement is widely distributed across new areas each day, instead of being concentrated in one area where a flock might otherwise repeatedly congregate.

2) Plant species are grazed more evenly due to increased animal competition. Less selective-grazing occurs; the less-desirable plants are grazed along with the more desirable species.

3) Over-grazing is prevented. Over-grazing is defined by the Noble Research Institute as "the repeated grazing of a plant before it has fully recovered from a previous grazing event." Appropriate grazing is good for grasses and forbs, but they need time to recover between grazing events.

4) Divinely-designed interactions are promoted, such as those between plant roots mycorrhizal fungi. These interactions work to build healthy soils.

PA Lamb Farm
Mansfield, PA

"Growing quality lambs, diligent hands, and grateful hearts"

2026.05.31 photo date

06/02/2026

There was very little turbulence on this daily move, and some pretty great... (wait for it).... lambinar flow!

Ok, ahem, but seriously, this is great. With lambs moving this well, we may soon be able to herd to non-contiguous acreages. All lambs crossed through a 50' opening, without any chaotic swirling, running back, or jumping into nettings.

(In other good news, we also did not get our poorly-positioned 2-year old crew member knocked down. Can you spot him?)

PA Lamb Farm
Mansfield, PA

"Growing quality lambs, diligent hands, and grateful hearts"

2026.06.01

06/01/2026

Dung beetles are "street cred" in regenerative agriculture circles, an indicator of management that fosters soil health. We have them, and we are thankful for them!

There is divine design in natural processes, and learning and working within those designs is not only endlessly enlightening, but also may provide greater economic stability.

As designed, invertebrates, microbes, fungi, and plant roots function inter-dependently as a nutrient-transport network within soil.

Within the context of intensively managed sheep-grazing, soil life can grow and flourish, building healthier soils. Healthier soils will be more productive. Plants will be more resilient to droughts or excess rain.

By contrast, as best we understand it, overuse of purchased inputs (e.g. herbicides, insecticides, fertilizers), may diminish natural systems. Such inputs will often improve yields and even economics in the short term, but with over-application through time, they can diminish natural processes over the long term.

When plant roots routinely receive nutrients from synthetic fertilizers, for example, roots cease to function within the interdependent systems that provide the same nutrients naturally, causing those systems to diminish.

As natural systems diminish, maintaining yields requires ever more inputs, in a downward spiral toward dead soils and bad economics.

We manage our flock to work within natural processes wherever we graze. And we are so thankful to watch even the dung beetles play their small but important role in this divinely designed system, which is far beyond our comprehension!

PA Lamb Farm
Mansfield, PA

"Growing quality lambs, diligent hands, and grateful hearts"

05/30/2026

Sometimes a shepherd has to pull lambs. I started to post a video of the process of pulling these two (first twin was presenting breech with back hooves caught in the birth canal, and second twin was normal), but I guess I just do not want to provide fodder for perverse people, who will turn anything good into something vile.

The process involves reaching in through the birth canal and into the uterus, and carefully sorting & guiding lambs out.

We get better at it every year. It takes practice, but you too can develop a feel for "seeing" the arrangement with your fingers, and for sorting it out.

Perhaps the only way to learn this is through practice.

In the process, marvel at God's design. Too many read science books without also regularly experiencing life's most pivotal moments: birth and death. Interactions with birth frequently present some "new" marvel to an observer, some wonder not previously noted.

For example:

1) This observation is simple but profound: As the fluid-filled birth sac gently "leads the way" through the birth canal, it most usually guides the enveloped head and front hooves of a lamb together into the cervix. That alignment leads to ultimate dilation and delivery. (If you experience a nose that misses the opening and a head turned back, you will understand how vital this is!)

2) And why does a lamb does not bleed out through its umbilical cord when that cord is torn upon birth? The major arteries within that conduit had been the sole supply of nutrients and oxygen to the lamb. But as the lamb takes its first breaths, blood ceases to use the old plumbing, and follows a new route that includes the lungs. I would love to understand more about the fluid dynamics and pressure changes that bring that about!

Birth is a breathtakingly complex transition, and so thoroughly designed. Praise, worship, and obey the Creator.


PA Lamb Farm
Mansfield, PA

"Growing quality lambs, diligent hands, and grateful hearts"

05/29/2026

At this stage of production, some number of lambs always lag behind when moving sheep. We are picking up 328' of netting between prior and current days' paddocks to be sure the lambs don't entangle themselves after we leave them.

Lambs lagging behind is really not an issue; we needed to leave the whole flock access back to that hedgerow for shade. We had timed our arrival to this shady shelter for the two hottest days in the week.

The flock is grazing 2-3 acres per day.

PA Lamb Farm
Mansfield, PA

"Growing quality lambs, diligent hands, and grateful hearts."

During 2026 lambing (on pasture), moving the flock at least once daily allowed us to continually leave behind ewes with ...
05/28/2026

During 2026 lambing (on pasture), moving the flock at least once daily allowed us to continually leave behind ewes with new lambs. We had not done this previously, did not anticipate doing this this year, and only became intentional about it some days into lambing.

The opportunities created should have been obvious, and are no surprise to many. But we had not realized how convenient it was to have ewes with lambs (greater than 1-day old) separated from the lambing heavy-breds.

While moving the heavy-breds on ahead daily, we left behind ewes with their lambs that had been born that day, and drifted those sets toward central areas that the heavy-breds never touched (as a group).

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Three benefits:

1) It was immensely easier both to monitor and to move the heavy-breds. We had far greater flexibility to move them through pasture connections made tricky by topography or gates, without lambs getting left behind en masse.

2) After 20 days of lambing, we could move the group of ewes with lambs off-farm to adjacent leased ground that is lacking permanent infrastructure, while keeping ewes who had not lambed closer to home. While grass on the homeplace had not recovered adequately for a second pass by the *full* flock, holding the very small number of remaining heavy-breds would not meaningfully set back the fast-recovering spring flush.

3) Because the heavy-breds were consuming so little grass after day 12 (as a shrinking group, and by acreage), we were able to keep them much closer to the central facilities from days 9 through 21, instead of blowing through & past. This meant that if a brand new set needed help bonding, we did not have to move it so far. And when the crew spotted a problem, help was closer. (Meanwhile, the ewes with older lambs were drifted further off to larger pastures during that interval.)
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An aerial view of our actual grazing pattern would look nothing like this chart. But we used the concept of maintaining an interface between the heavy breds, who were consuming less acreage daily, and the ewes with lambs, who were consuming increasing acreage daily.

Integrating two distinct grazing paths presented opportunities and convenience that we had not previously enjoyed.

05/27/2026

The majority of the flock has lambed and is now on a grazing circuit. We are very grateful to so many neighbors who invite our flock to mow their acreages! We are blessed with a community that values work, agriculture, and the wonders of God's designs in nature.

Daily moves are a bit tricky with lambs this young, but it can work with patience and a very wide opening from one paddock to the next.

Hair-sheep may be ideal ruminants for pasture-health in the Pennsylvania Wilds region for at least three reasons:

1) When grazing is intensively managed, sheep stimulate good grass regrowth. Grazing reduces thatch, which ties up nutrients, limits regrowth and promote invasives. Sheep recycle and distribute nutrients back onto the soil in an available form.

2) Hair-sheep strip leaves from invasive shrubs like autumn olive and honeysuckle. (They will slow multi-flora rose and thistles when not too mature or abundant.)

3) Unlike heavier species, sheep do not overly-compact our thin top-soils or damage plant roots (create pugging) in soft areas.

Thanks to all of you who allow us to graze (whether past, present, or future), are patient with us crossing roads, and who slow down just to watch and enjoy the pastoral scenes!

PA Lamb Farm
Mansfield, PA

"Growing quality lambs, diligent hands, and grateful hearts"

After day 9, lambing got busy! We are now through it. Everyone weathered the cool rainy weather without issue-- but t...
05/26/2026

After day 9, lambing got busy! We are now through it. Everyone weathered the cool rainy weather without issue-- but the few 85 deg-F days toward the end of lambing were a challenge. Shade became vital, and the flock’s collective movements in and out of shade, alternating between intervals of grazing and cooling off, threatened constant disruption to lambs that were being born during those times.

Best we can figure, staffing through pasture lambing requires about two people on lambing-duty for most of daylight. The children worked with Nathan on 3-hour rotations, and each child gave his replacement a detailed handover at shift’s end. Our biggest challenge-- and the driver of the labor need-- is management of thief ewes. Thieving is a function of the frequency of coincident lambings within small areas. (Hormones kick in when labor gets serious, and many an experienced dam starts looking for "her" lambs before she has delivered them.) At somewhere above about a 100-ewe flock size, thieving begins to become a problem, and every additional ewe compounds the problem. With about 229 ewes having lambed in 21 days, we had to keep a close watch.

With one person primarily watching over the flock and monitoring thieving, the other is freed to set-up electric netting for the next day’s grass allotment, move animals, haul water, and to help intervene in the lambing and bonding processes when warranted.

Someone says, “just let the ewes sort it out, and generally all the lambs will be taken care of.” But the hands-off pasture-lambing operations that we hear about run closer to 1.3 weaned lambs per ewe (versus our 1.7). And without actually being with the flock, we cannot practically know who was born to whom. Without that knowledge, we would not be able to continually improve the flock by selecting breeding stock from proven dams with great physical and maternal characteristics.

But we love to hear how other operations manage their own lambing periods, and are very open to changes especially as we aim to continue to scale (for the sake of improving economics).

We have one mature ewe and about fifteen one-year-olds bagged up and ready to lamb in this second 21 day period, corresponding to the ewes’ second heat-cycle during ram exposure. There is really no further thieving challenge at this reduced rate of lambing.

Photos: the PA Lamb Farm crew

PA Lamb Farm
Mansfield, PA 16933

“Growing quality lambs, diligent hands, and grateful hearts”

05/15/2026

This 12-month-old ewe gave the final push to deliver her lamb, cleaned it off, and allowed it to nurse all without getting up! She has a calm disposition, great mothering instinct, and happens to be a 2024 daughter of a ewe featured in our May 3rd Facebook post.

This young ewe has been raised on pasture and never provided any protein or energy supplementation— just pasture and pasture hay.

PA Lamb Farm
Mansfield, PA
“Growing quality lambs, diligent hands, and grateful hearts”

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Mansfield, PA
16933

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